I think I need blinders

As I continue to unpack that box of family papers, I see all sorts of handwritten notes and questions from both my grandmother and my aunt. Some of the jotted names are quite familiar and are indeed part of the current family tree, but there are some that I've never heard or seen before. I'm absolutely intrigued! While I'd love to just launch off and see what I can find about these folks and try to figure out how or if they fit into the family, I'm trying to stay focused on sorting and scanning this formidable stack of papers...which, at this rate, probably won't be done for a couple of weeks. Don't know if I can resist that long. We'll see just how firm my resolve ends up being.

Taming the photo monster

I'm determined to get my photos under control. Not only do I have a ton of family photo prints from the last 40+ years (and of course most of them aren't labeled with dates, locations, or even people's names...bad Pat!) but I also have slides, and of course all the old family photos. While I've scanned a few of the photos, usually to share with other family members, I've not been particularly methodical about it (the My Pictures folder on my laptop is a nightmare...duplicates, triplicates, egads!). Sooo, it's time for a new strategy. And with that, I'm officially putting my current online photo collection in the timeout corner.

I've realized that having printed photos in an album just doesn't work for me. Once they go in there I never look at them. So the photos need to come out of the albums. And although I have racks and racks of slides, I haven't had a projector in years! Time to go digital.

I'll be separating the photos & slides into 2 piles:

• those I want to scan so I can view them online and easily make them available to the rest of the family
• those that aren't really all that interesting and/or are basically dupes of what's in that first pile (and why in the world do I take so many pictures of flowers anyway?)...these will likely go into photo archive boxes to collect dust (yeah, I know I should just toss 'em...but I won't)

Now I don't have a lot of patience for scanning so, to save my sanity, I'll be shipping that "to scan" pile off to a professional digital photo house to take care of that. Only exception to that is some of the really old family photos. I guess I have trust issues--I really don't want to let them out of my sight, plus I'm afraid they won't handle them gently--so those I will scan (or rescan) myself.

After I receive the digital files, figuring out the naming convention, where they should live on my system, and how/where to post these online will be the next challenge. And those other photos in my "timeout corner?" At some point I guess I'll have to go through those and see what's worth keeping and posting...but I'm a realist: that won't happen until later this year.

In the next month or so I'll post a link to the location of the new family photo library. Stay tuned.

Rest in peace, Aunt Babs

Unfortunately we lost our Blanche "Babs" Anderson (nee Kingery) this evening. Progressive illness and several hip surgeries were contributing factors. In her last days she was transferred from the hospital back to Maple Lawn Convalescent home in Fulda Minnesota where she had lived the last few months, so she was in familiar surroundings with staff and family attending to her at the end.

I was fortunate to have seen her in April (first picture below) and again last week (second picture with daughter Susan). She was quick with a smile and had her usual sense of humor.

I love her and I will miss her.  But I know she's now with family who've also passed on, including my grandfather Albert, my grandmother Blanche, and my mom Pat, and she's now free of the pain that I know she endured for many months. Rest in peace, Aunt Babs. Until we meet again.

Now who am I again?

When I was about 14 years old I found a handwritten journal in our bookcase at home. I saw my grandmother Blanche's signature on the inside cover. My mother and I lived in our own apartment so I have no idea why we had this little book.

So as any curious 14 year old would do, I started leafing through it. It seemed that the entries spanned a series of years, starting in 1951. The writings included family history, births & deaths and associated notations that went back a couple of generations on both the Kingery and Vinson sides. There were also a few deeply personal diary-type notes, along with less personal notes such as a household budget. 

As I was reading the family history section I found an entry that didn't jibe with my understanding of my family. When my mother came home I, of course, asked her about what I read. She flew into a rage and demanded to know where I got that information. I shrugged and wandered off to my room. Nothing was said after that. 

Of course the next time I went to my grandparent's place, for summer vacation as I recall, I asked my grandmother what that was all about. She said "I promised your mother I'd never tell you, but you deserve to know." (Ah, another family skeleton!) And she proceeded to tell me that my mother's husband at the time, the man who I thought was my father wasn't. She told me the circumstances behind my birth and even that my real father, Warren Ruark, came to see me when I was a couple of weeks old...apparently there was a strong enough family resemblance that he knew he'd made a mistake denying my mother's claim that she was pregnant with his child. Mom had already married someone else. What was done, was done.

This revelation didn't bother me as much as you'd think. I hadn't seen my "father" since my mother divorced him (for the second time...long story) when I was about 6 years old, and I remember him as being quite a prick, to her and to me. To know that I wasn't actually related to him was a relief. 

My grandmother also told me something else. When I was a child my mother use to take me to visit "Aunt Jean." At the end of one of our visits I remember asking her if Jean was really my aunt, at which point she teared up and said "No honey, she's just a very good friend." It seems that Jean was my father's mother...my other grandmother...and my two grandmothers had been in touch all along. My grandmother Blanche then gave me Jean's address. It took me a couple of months but I finally screwed up the courage to write to Jean. She never wrote back, unless my mother intercepted her response. And so I left it there.

So I was a Ruark rather than a Ross, which was just fine with me. It took me another 30 years before I decided to try to find my father. But I'll write about that in a future post.

When is a Thomas not a Thomas? When he's a Snook

So now to my father's side of the equation. My dad's name was Warren George Ruark. He was the only child of George Edward Ruark and Eddy Imogen Thomas (her birth name but she had quite a few aliases...more on that in a future post). She was known to the family as Jean so I'll refer to her by that name.

Jean's parents were Edward Thomas (no middle name) and Imogene J. Jones. While Imogene Jones' lineage seems fairly well documented (although I think there are some irregularities there, too), Edward Thomas turned out to be more challenging to track down, and there was absolutely no information about his parentage. From other records I found, Edward was supposedly born in Montana anywhere between 1875 and 1879 (available records varied on this). Given the very common names of "Edward" and "Thomas," you can imagine just how difficult it was to do online searches. After a few months of searching I stumbled upon what I thought was the date and location of his death. Taking a leap of faith, I ordered the death certificate:

Yay! The right one. So I see on this that he wasn't born in Montana, but rather Pennsylvania. And his father is listed as "Rubin Thomas." That's a piece of info I'd not had before. But that didn't help me much, because there was absolutely no one by that name in that timeframe with a son named Edward.

So I go back to the death certificate and see that he was married to a Lucretia Foreman at the time of his death. Back to searching, I find the marriage certificate:

Interesting. His previous wife Jean (my great grandmother) is one of the witnesses so I know I have the right one. Now he's listed, again, as being born in Montana. And now I have his mother's name "Elizabeth Neerhood." So I'm looking for a Rubin (or Reuben) Thomas and an Elizabeth Neerhood in either Pennsylvania or Montana. I'm delving into dozens of dusty old records and finding absolutely nothing.

So I take a different tack. Neerhood isn't a common name so I focus on that. I finally come up with an Elizabeth "Nerhood" having married a widower named Reuben Snook (not Thomas) in Pennsylvania, having their first couple of children in Pennsylvania, and then moving to Montana. One of their Pennsylvania-born children was named Thomas Edward. Thomas Edward Snook was on Montana census records up until 1900--he listed his profession as gold miner. No records with that name after 1900. However, in the 1910 census I find a gold miner named Edward Thomas (Thomas being the last name) in Alaska. Same birth year, parents born in Pennsylvania. Hmmmm.

So, given this (and supported with records/information too lengthy to get into here), I'm pretty certain that great grandfather Edward Thomas was really great grandfather Thomas Edward Snook. And if that's the case, this would be great great grandparents Reuben & Elizabeth (Nerhood) Snook:

(Thanks to Troy Midkiff for the use of this photo. Troy is descended from Reuben and his first wife Mary Ann Walker. The handwritten date on the photo is incorrect since Reuben & Elizabeth didn't actually move to the Montana Territory until after 1882.)

The Carved Box

I spent a lot of time at the home of my Kingery grandparents. As I understand it, my grandmother basically raised me for the first few years...I also spent most holidays and summer vacations with them. I have very fond memories of my grandparents and remember well the Santa Clara apartment (cherry orchard across the street and my elementary school, Scott Lane, nearby) and the Tracy house at the San Joaquin River Club (with small fishing lakes, a "swimmin' hole" and plenty of paths to ride my bike). One of my favorite memories was of my grandmother's carved Chinese box that she kept in the den.

If memory serves me, my grandfather bought that box for her during a trip to Chinatown in San Francisco. My grandmother use to keep family papers and mementos in the box, and I loved going through it as a kid...was always careful with the objects, knowing these were somehow important. Tin types. Old letters. Pocket watches in individual cloth tobacco bags. I knew these things were important to her, so they were important to me. I understood, even at an early age, that these things were of my grandparent's past and therefore were also my past.

When my grandparents passed away, my mother inherited the carved box. I use to see it in her bedroom but I never opened it...I assumed that the objects I remembered so warmly were no longer there, having been dispersed to other family members. Prior to my mother's passing almost 10 months ago, she and I sat down to go through her things, including that box, it was indeed true--those objects were no longer there. Instead, it contained her own mementos and memories. The fondly remembered objects of my grandparents and those before them were gone.

Fast forward to last week. As I sat with cousin Susan going going through boxes and bags of my grandparent's papers that I'd hoped would help further my family research, I began to recognize pieces of that past. A tin type. A beautifully penned love letter from my great grandfather to my great grandmother. Masonic certificates enclosed in old leather envelopes. Apparently some of the contents of that Chinese box weren't gone, they were just waiting to be found again. 

So as the current caretaker of these remaining treasures, it'll be my pleasure to scan and share these wonderful pieces of our history with all in our family. And once that's done, those family treasures will return to that carved box, adding them to my mother's mementos and memories. Seems fitting. 

Grandmom's Search

My grandmother Blanche was never quite sure of her parentage, in spite of having a birth certificate with names of both mother and father. James & Almeda Meadley were the names on the certificate, however she considered her father Victor Vinson and felt that her mother was Nan (Howell) Vinson. What happened there is speculation on my part, and it's one of our notable "skeletons." With her having been raised by "Mommie Fairchild" (Minnie Fairchild), an older woman with no obvious connections to the Vinsons, only deepens the mystery.

In going through that box of recently received family papers, I found a stash of paperwork that was obviously assembled by my grandmother: her official birth records and letters written in the 50's to various people inquiring about the Meadley's, if they existed at all (in my research I've yet to find any trace of them). She was obviously trying to uncover the truth, unfortunately without much success.

I often think of how much my grandmother would enjoy this time, having access to technology and on-line records that would have made her search so much easier...well maybe not easier if the records don't exist, but at least a whole heck of a lot faster! I'm sure she'd be glued to the computer just as I am, reading, researching, and getting that adrenaline rush when stumbling upon the smallest fragment of information that leads to the next discovery. I'd like to think she's looking over my shoulder while I'm researching, pleased to know that I've taken on the mantle.

So I'll continue my grandmother's research in hopes of finding that elusive truth. It feels like I'm getting closer. I hope I'm successful. It would be my gift to her almost 40 years after her death.

Buried Treasure!

A few months ago my Aunt Babs and I were talking about our family history. She's always been interested in mapping out the family, and she's the one who mentioned years ago that part of our family lineage is documented in the "Hutchins - Hutchens: descendants of Strangeman Hutchins, born 1707, of the James River in Virginia and Surry (Yadkin) County, North Carolina."

I mentioned to my aunt that I'd planned to try to get my grandmother Blanche's birth certificate, among other records, to more fully document our family tree. She told me that she thought that record was among others that she gave to her daughter (my cousin) Susan. So I contacted Susan and asked if she'd mind if I took copies of the records since I'm knee-deep in our genealogy research. Susan graciously offered to give me all of the family paperwork; in return, I told her I would scan and post the significant finds.

So, as I mentioned in a previous blog posting, I went to visit my aunt and cousins in Minnesota early this month. I stayed with Susan (and Doug) at their house. During the day I visited my aunt at the nursing home and in the evenings we dug through the boxes/bags of papers. What a treasure! There were records for things I'd completely forgotten about (like my grandmother worked for the Department of the Navy during WWII) and pictures and artifacts from not only my grandparents but also my great great grandparents. Amazing!

So at the end of the sorting frenzy there were 3 very large piles of paper. Since I couldn't carry that back on the plane with me, I decided to mail it to myself and pray that it got home OK. I started writing this post early today and the box had still not been delivered...I was getting antsy. Thankfully, the mailman delivered the package just a couple of hours ago. I'm in heaven! While I would love to start sorting/organizing/scanning, I'm going to resist for this evening. Tomorrow I'll begin the process slowly and methodically. I just hope I can sleep tonight!

Going Home

As I was growing up I heard stories about Indianapolis, home to the Kingery and Vinson side of my family. I'd never been there but had always thought about visiting. Since I was going to attend my niece Lauren's wedding in Washington at the end of August and also wanted to visit my Aunt Babs in Minnesota, I combined those trips along with a trip to Indianapolis.

While in Indianapolis I wanted to do some genealogical research at various libraries and records offices. I also wanted to visit some of the areas I'd heard about as a child. I spent time in Valley Mills (luckily still a quaint little enclave that's just off Kentucky Ave), tried to find my great grandmother and grandfather Kingery's house on S. Sheffield (wasn't successful), visited the unmarked graves of my Kingery and Vinson ancestors (Floral Park, New Crown, and West Newton cemeteries), and even went to Sunday service at the Valley Mills Friends (Quaker) Church where it seems my great great grandparents worshipped:

I did some research at the Indiana Historical Society (http://www.indianahistory.org/), the Indiana State Library in their separate Genealogy library (http://www.in.gov/library/genealogy.htm), and at the Indiana State Archives (http://www.in.gov/icpr/2358.htm). While I found a few things, I basically just tried to find my way around how Indiana handles its records, discovering that most of what I was trying to find was likely in various Marion County records facilities. Of course by that time my stay in Indiana was coming to a close. Armed with this new understanding, I'll contact the appropriate agencies to continue the search, and hopefully make it back to the area next year to do more on-site research...and to visit the Howell family graves where I was oh-so-close but didn't know they were buried there (another downside of lacking full preparation).

One of the highlights of this trip was meeting my 83-year old aunt Anna...yes, I did say "meet." Anna is my grandfather Albert's daughter from his first marriage. While I had always known about Anna (and her brother "Sonny"), I didn't realize that my Aunt Babs had been in touch with Anna since 1973, the year of my grandfather's death. I had the happy occasion to speak with Anna during my visit to Babs earlier this year, and so arranged to visit Anna during my Indiana trip. My newly-found Aunt Anna was very sweet and welcoming, fixed lunch for the both of us, and we just talked and talked for hours. I was so glad to have made this connection after so many years. Here's my lovely Aunt Anna just before I had to leave for the day:

So, although I'd never been to Indiana, this really did feel like a bit of a homecoming. The stories I was told of this place and our family came alive for me. I felt at home. I plan to visit again next year...perhaps I can get cousin Genna from Texas to join me. Now that would be fun!

Why this? Why now?

Many of my friends and most all of my family know that I've had an interest in family history. That's been challenging given the various skeletons in my family closet! I really got the bug last year when my mother was quite ill...I found myself spending more and more time researching and documenting my family connections.

I'd thought about creating a blog to chronicle certain research and interesting findings but never quite got around to it. Now that I've just returned from a research trip to Indianapolis, the birthplace of my grandparents and mother, it was time to finally start this blog. I don't know how often I'll post...I'm shooting for once a week after what I expect will be a flurry of postings in the next few days.

One thing to note: I plan to tell the truth, rather than to perpetuate the family mythology. As I've already discovered, the truth is just one found record away! Yes, as the name of this blog indicates, and with a nod to George Bernard Shaw: “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”